The present invention relates generally to robotic installation of flexible seals on parts, and more particularly to robotic installation of flexible seals onto vehicle components.
Flexible seals may be applied to various components, where the seal includes a strip of adhesive that is pressed against the component as the seal is wrapped around the periphery of the component. For example, a vehicle door may have a primary seal mounted around its periphery in order to seal the periphery of the door to the vehicle body. This seal may prevent water intrusion into the vehicle and reduce wind noise as the vehicle is moving. Such seals may be made of, for example, a flexible rubber tube. Such a seal may be hand installed, but this is slow and does not guarantee accurate placement of the seal on the door.
Others have automated the process of applying a primary seal to a vehicle door by using a robot to move the door while a machine dispenses the seal onto the door. The seal in this particular case may have an adhesive along one side that is pressed against the door as the seal is dispensed onto the door. This machine feeds out the seal at a rate that attempts to match the speed of the door periphery moving past the machine as the robot moves the door. However, due to the complex shapes of door peripheries, the robots employed tend to use six motors to obtain all of the degrees of freedom needed to move the door past the machine. This complexity tends to cause speed fluctuations, especially around corners on the door periphery, where the speed of the periphery of the door moving past the machine and the rate of seal feed from the machine can be as high as twenty percent different. This unintended difference in speed causes the flexible seal to distort (either stretch or contract) as the adhesive is pressed onto the door. The flexible seal then relaxes before the adhesive has fully set, which may pull the seal away from the door at some locations. Thus, the seal is not completely attached to the door periphery, which can cause sealing issues.